My practicum school was a semi-selective high school in Tamworth. They had started conducting the selection tests on the current year 7 cohort. As a result the school is still developing its reputation as a high performance school. The school’s population consists of mainly Indigenous students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and still carries the stigma of being a ‘rough’ school.
The class - 7L
7L is a low literacy class comprised of predominately boys. Quite a number of the students were in touch with their Aboriginal backgrounds and enjoyed learning about myths and legends both from Australian and from around the world. Many of the students appeared to be visual and kinaesthetic learners. The students were very energetic and behaviour management was important for this group of students, especially when students were feeling overwhelmed or when disengaged.
The lesson
In this lesson students would use a range of methods, including the Reading to learn method, to locate information crucial to developing their understanding of oral traditions and why they are significant to an individual and/or a culture.
The Reading to learn program has 3 distinct levels. They are as follows:
Preparing for reading and modeling writing - prepares the students for the comprehension of curriculum texts and uses texts as models for writing activities. Detailed reading and writing - to deepen a students understanding and to incorporate the information and language patterns into the students’ own writing. Intensive strategies - intensive support to assist students in manipulating language patterns and develop their vocabulary and spelling.
In this lesson, the students will be completing the first stage of the cycle; Joint Deconstruction, and the first half of the second stage; sentence or note-taking. It was decided that students will highlight sections as opposed to physically writing down the important sentences due to time restraints and the students' abilities.
Lesson Plan sample
Learning Goal: Students will learn to locate information crucial to developing their understanding of oral traditions and why they are significant to an individual and/or culture.
Syllabus outcomes include: 1. Responds to and composes texts or understanding, interpretation, critical analysis and pleasure 2. use a range of processes for responding to and composing texts 7. Thinks critically and interpretively about information, ideas and arguments to respond to and compose texts 10. Identifies, considers and appreciates cultural expression in texts
Outline should of the transcript activity: Teacher establishes the purpose of the activity and identifies what students should be focusing on, students watch the video twice, discussion of the video, teacher provides students with the transcript, teacher outlines the task and states the purpose (focus on comprehension, vocabulary and spelling), teacher reads through the transcript, students read through the transcript themselves, students complete the task, students share responses and unknown words are discussed/transcribed on the board for students to copy down.
Benefits of the learning activity
Adheres to the syllabus outcomes
Students are encouraged to read aloud and practice their pronunciation of language
Text challenges most students in relation to vocabulary and concepts
Students learn to look for cues to gather information
Students learn to differentiate between the individual and the collective
Students are encouraged to take control of their own learning by identifying unknown vocabulary
Caters to aural (listening to the clip), visual (written word and colour coding) and kinaesthetic (interaction with the transcript) learners
Structure provides the students with an expectation of what they should be doing at each stage of the lesson
Students learn to interact with the text
Students are able to support each other and share perspectives
Indigenous perspectives are presented
The activity provides the teacher with time to assess individual understanding through short conversations
My practicum school was a semi-selective high school in Tamworth. They had started conducting the selection tests on the current year 7 cohort. As a result the school is still developing its reputation as a high performance school. The school’s population consists of mainly Indigenous students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and still carries the stigma of being a ‘rough’ school.
The class - 7L
7L is a low literacy class comprised of predominately boys. Quite a number of the students were in touch with their Aboriginal backgrounds and enjoyed learning about myths and legends both from Australian and from around the world. Many of the students appeared to be visual and kinaesthetic learners. The students were very energetic and behaviour management was important for this group of students, especially when students were feeling overwhelmed or when disengaged.
The lesson
In this lesson students would use a range of methods, including the Reading to learn method, to locate information crucial to developing their understanding of oral traditions and why they are significant to an individual and/or a culture.
The Reading to learn program has 3 distinct levels. They are as follows:
Preparing for reading and modeling writing - prepares the students for the comprehension of curriculum texts and uses texts as models for writing activities.
Detailed reading and writing - to deepen a students understanding and to incorporate the information and language patterns into the students’ own writing.
Intensive strategies - intensive support to assist students in manipulating language patterns and develop their vocabulary and spelling.
Reading to learn website
In this lesson, the students will be completing the first stage of the cycle; Joint Deconstruction, and the first half of the second stage; sentence or note-taking. It was decided that students will highlight sections as opposed to physically writing down the important sentences due to time restraints and the students' abilities.
Lesson Plan sample
Learning Goal: Students will learn to locate information crucial to developing their understanding of oral traditions and why they are significant to an individual and/or culture.
Syllabus outcomes include:
1. Responds to and composes texts or understanding, interpretation, critical analysis and pleasure
2. use a range of processes for responding to and composing texts
7. Thinks critically and interpretively about information, ideas and arguments to respond to and compose texts
10. Identifies, considers and appreciates cultural expression in texts
Outline should of the transcript activity: Teacher establishes the purpose of the activity and identifies what students should be focusing on, students watch the video twice, discussion of the video, teacher provides students with the transcript, teacher outlines the task and states the purpose (focus on comprehension, vocabulary and spelling), teacher reads through the transcript, students read through the transcript themselves, students complete the task, students share responses and unknown words are discussed/transcribed on the board for students to copy down.
Benefits of the learning activity
Further reading
Scaffolding the english CurriculumWhat has worked at Wiltja